I had a brainwave today relating to the book- there’s a set of scenes that introduces one of the main bad guys, and I knew instinctively that it wasn’t working, and I’d been trying to sort out a way of making work. Suddenly, on a walk in the woods today, I saw a way of doing it, which would involve some major shuffling around in what I’m referring to as the cliffhanger to part 2 of the book, leading into the final act. I saw it, and suddenly realised that it would read better, and be much more ‘novelistic’- alot of my storytelling devices are actually hi-jacked from television and comics, and there’s times when that kind of thing doesn’t work. So, I had a solution- trouble is, I couldn’t come up with a way of shuffling around the cliffhanger that wouldn’t suck the drama out of the scene. At the moment, it has a couple of clunky sections, but part 2 of the book ends on a genuine “Holy Crap, what the hell’s going to happen now?” moment that will hopefully have people screaming to get on to Part 3. I could change that to something more ‘literary’ that might have better technique- but I think it’d lose the storytelling energy that it’s got at the moment. I’m not saying there isn’t a way of doing it and not losing the energy- but I really think that unpicking a major chunk of the story, at a time when it’s actually starting to feel like it’s fitting together, would be a bad move. If I’d had this idea much, much earlier, I might have been able to do something with it- but it’s not the kind of idea you can introduce into a story without damaging the framework that’s already built. I’d rather concentrate on getting the story as it is to a standard that I’m proud of, rather than spend the next few months trying new configurations of plotting, and ending up essentially chasing my tail. This is a lesson for the next one- it’s too late for this one. I’m going to get this thing into shape, and I’m going to be proud of it…

One more day to go, but the experience of being in Cornwall now has the distinct feeling of winding down, mainly because I’ve gotten to roughly the point where I wanted to be. I now have a slightly shambolic but considerably slimmed down version of the book- and the current word count?

160,920

That’s about 27,000 words shorter than the previous version, which is making me feel like I’m actually getting somewhere. Of course, a reasonable proportion of the book- especially the last third- is a bit on the underwritten side, and is going to need a small amount of expanding to read well, but I’m hoping it’ll all equalise out with the other stuff that I’m sure I’ll be hacking out at some point. I think I’m roughly looking at a book that- theoretically speaking, and depending on type size- would be about 350-450 pages long, which is a little longer than I was aiming, but not by much.

The plan now is to get back to London, print the thing out, get George to read it through, then sit down with the manuscript and note down every single problem (which may, to be honest, take a while). Then, I’m going to go through the thing with a fine-tooth comb, and fix as many of the technical problems as I can. Once it’s as polished up as can be… then I’m going to send it out to people. Whatever the problems that come back, I don’t want silly, trivial spelling mistakes and grammar errors to be coming between them and the story. If they don’t like it, then they don’t like it- I just don’t want to be giving them reasons not to like it.

I’m happy, though. It feels like I’m making progress, and I’m another step along the way towards making a book that I’m proud of.

I just lost a subplot. It collapsed on me, and the worrying thing is, I think the book’s much better as a result. It was a section of the story that kind of grew in by accident- I was doing a major rewrite to try and get it to work, and I was hitting major problems. Serious, serious writing block, to the extent that I started losing all faith in the book, my abilities, and the last year that I’d spent trying to hammer this damn thing into shape. I knew what my brain was telling me- dump it- because I’d felt it about another subplot which just wasn’t working out. I think the main deciding factor was that the subplot only actually appeared directly four times in the first nine chapters, and didn’t actually impact on the main plot until right at the end. I’ll lose a couple of really nice sections, but I think it’ll also end up more focussed as a result. The main thing is- I’m not attempting to write a powerful literary novel about the future. I’m trying to write a fun romp, and anything which gets in the way of the fun romp-ness may need to go.

This may have a massive effect on the stuff I need to do. However, I’m going to see where this takes me.